I hope that this is the last network outage announcement that we’ll have for a while, but need to notify users of the ICCSD network that we will have an outage affecting all schools in the northwest quadrant of the district beginning Saturday morning at 7 AM and lasting for five to seven hours.

Affected schools include:

Liberty High School

Northwest Junior High

North Central Junior High

Borlaug Elementary

Coralville Central Elementary

Garner Elementary

Kirkwood Elementary

Penn Elementary

Van Allen Elementary

Wickham Elementary

This outage is due to a major fiber rerouting project that must be completed due to a property transaction by the City of Iowa City. In addition to the aforementioned schools, this outage will also affect portions of the networks of the City of Iowa City, Johnson County, the Iowa Department of Transportation, and The University of Iowa, to name a few entities.

While we were able to take steps during an earlier phase of this project to avoid outages for district facilities, that will be impossible during this phase of work. It is our hope that, upon completion, we will have no further network outages in the foreseeable future.

In advance of winter break, I wanted to share a handful of dates when we’ll have network maintenance that will affect network, wireless, and/or internet availability within the district during the break.

January 2nd, 2018

Switch maintenance at Liberty High and Northwest Junior High will cause network disruptions in those buildings between 6 AM and 8 AM. Network and internet services may be unavailable during this time period.

Further work will be done throughout the day in the following buildings, but we do not expect the work to result in network outages or downtime: Alexander ES, West HS, Liberty HS, Educational Services Center, South East JH, and North Central JH.

As everyone is aware, we have been experiencing some issue with the KACE (KBOX) system both in the administrator portals and the Help Desk configuration. Due to a certificate error, some people have been receiving a message that KACE is unavailable due to too many redirects within the portal. This should now be resolved. Continue reading KACE Outage Update→

As I’m preparing to assist with Google-focused professional development for staff here at the ESC, I wanted to share more broadly some tips and tricks for working more efficiently and effectively within the Google G-Suite, including Drive, Docs, Sheets, Forms, Calendar, and other apps. Some of the resources below are mine and some are from elsewhere; I hope that some of these tips are helpful to you! Continue reading Google G-Suite Tips and Tricks→

As we learn during our first year Canvas implementation, I have some notes to share regarding teachers’ and students’ access to last trimester’s Canvas courses and data.

Accessing Previous Grades – Teachers

If you log in to your T1 Canvas courses this morning, you will find that the “Grades” page appears to be empty. In order to view and work with T1 grades, you will need to click the gear icon in the top right, and then choose “Show Concluded Enrollments”.

Yesterday, I received a couple of emailed inquiries and a petition from students regarding a change in behavior when Chromebook lids were closed. Previously, the Chromebooks were set to automatically go to sleep when the lid is closed – this helps to prevent inadvertent battery drain and overheating – and then to wake up when the lid is opened. Continue reading Chromebook Logouts on Lid Closure→

The district recently distributed a survey regarding educational technologies to parents district-wide, and one parent reached out with questions regarding where they could get more information about our technology programs. This, combined with the fact that we recently published our 100th article and have been going strong for just over one year, leads me to conclude that it’s about time to reintroduce the Iowa City Schools’ Technology & Innovation blog!

We have over a thousand subscribers to the Technology & Innovation blog, but that obviously represents a very small slice of our larger school community, including parents, students, and other community stakeholders. It’s my goal that awareness of and access to this resource be spread to as many people as possible. With that in mind, I’m posting this reintroduction, including links to some of our highlights below. I’d encourage you to share this post via Twitter, Facebook, and email with anyone who might be interested.

What are Gmail Labs?

Have you ever wanted to be able to automate replies that you send on a regular basis? Automatically filter out bulk emails? Add your calendar to your Gmail interface? These and many more features are available within Gmail Labs, and can be enabled for any ICCSD account. Continue reading Extending Gmail with Google Labs→